The most common reason for savings drawdowns is that your income is not sufficient to cover your expenses.
If your income from all sources does not cover your expenses you will see a Savings Drawdown in your plan. Savings Drawdowns are automatically calculated based on any additional income needed to cover your expenses.
The GAP calculation is as follows
Income - Investment Income - Savings Contributions - Expenses = GAP
(Interest income is not used to fund expenses)
Savings Drawdown are made up of distributions from savings accounts, investment accounts, and retirement accounts based upon the default withdrawal order.
PlannerPlus members can see a breakdown of the distributions under Insights > Savings, scroll down to the Withdrawals chart at the bottom of the page. This chart aggregates one-time expenses, disbursements, transfers, Roth Conversions, and withdrawals.
Your accounts likely have a variety of tax treatments. As a result, when the planner withdraws from a particular account, your tax modeling will be impacted. Excluding accounts from the withdrawal strategy, or entering one-time expenses, disbursements, and transfers will also impact your tax modeling. Because the Planner includes your taxes in your expense modeling, any changes to your tax modeling will impact your expenses. It is an inevitable circular process you'll want to be aware of as you work on your plan and make adjustments.
PlannerPlus users can look at the Surplus-Gap chart to see their income compared to expenses and any surplus or gap on an annual basis.
If the years where there are "Funded Gaps" or light red bars pointing downward correspond with the savings drawdowns in question, you are likely drawing on savings to cover annual expenses.
A secondary reason that you may be seeing savings drawdowns in your plan is when you don't have enough income in January to cover expenses and estimated tax payments applied at the beginning of the year.
The tool will borrow from your savings in January and replenish your savings with excess income saved throughout the year.
If the years where there are "Saved Surplus" or purple bars pointing upward correspond with the savings drawdowns in question, you are likely drawing on savings to cover expenses early in the year.
